


The Blame Game

by OwlOfDeath



Series: Beyond Sand and Sea [1]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Anthropomorphic, Character Development, Fantasy, Gen, Guilt, Loss, Original Character(s), Sibling Love, Survivor Guilt, Vol'Dun, World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, vulpera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:15:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24778993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwlOfDeath/pseuds/OwlOfDeath
Summary: He wakes up alone to the sound of screaming and the smell of smoke.Even if he's awake it's like a nightmare, could this really be happening?
Series: Beyond Sand and Sea [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792156
Comments: 9
Kudos: 2





	The Blame Game

He woke when it was still dark inside the caravan, roused by a strange sound he didn't recognize scarping at the edges of his consciousness. In a dream like state he thought it sounded like laughter, but it was different, from someone he didn't know. But as he became more aware the laughter turned more and more into a scream. He started to pick up on other sounds in the distance, clashing, calls and yells, and a deep murmuring roar like... Fire!?

Jona kicked his blanket off and scrambled to reach for his trousers on the floor, tangling his arm in his oversized shirt, pulling them on and rushing for the door, nearly tripping over scattered clothes and the upturned book which must have slid off his bed at some point during the night. The foul stench of burning wood and hair hits him immediately as he opens the door, pushing the hangings aside to look out.

Their other caravan was a blazing inferno, several smoke pillars dotted all around the campsite from others just like it, a black shape nearby motionless in the sand. The sound from the fire and the shouting is suddenly so loud, yet it's almost drowned out by the hissing of blood rushing through his ears. It only takes a second to take in the scene, and his mind quickly grasps for an explanation. Sethrak, a raid, it's actually happening.

His heart almost skips a beat as he spots his family in the illumination from the caravan fire, relief so strong it makes him physically sick washing over him. His parents are talking to another group, their voices raised but composed, and his sisters are standing not far behind, arms around each other. But the feeling is quickly replaced, and a dark dread creeps into the back of his mind. 

_Something's missing._

"Wh—" he starts, but his throat is so tight hardly a syllable escapes. He jumps down from the caravan and runs for his sisters, half way being spotted and seeing the mixed emotions on their features. They open their arms and fold him in, hugging him close.

"Thank the sands! Jona!" Vesp utters in a single, shaking breath. The way she says it and the looks on their faces makes him almost weak at the knees, the dread growing and pushing at his mind insistently, numbing him with fear.

"Where's Kirin?" he says, talking over them but his voice only a hoarse whisper, his heart racing. He can't see Kirin anywhere.

"He was the first to— There was—" Vesp starts, but Mikka quickly interrupts, her voice level but her eyes swimming with tears.

"Sethrak took him; the raiders attacked and grabbed the first they could get. They're already gone."

"Where were you!?"

_Sleeping, I was up all night reading, and I slept through the raid, and they took Kirin._

"They came right before dawn. At least six people are missing! We though you... I'm so glad." He barely registered the words she said, a strange emptiness spreading, guilt stunning him, making him speechless.

_They took Kirin. And I slept through it._

"They're mounting a rescue party, but everything is chaos. They killed most of our animals in the attack," Mikka said, the restraint thick in her voice. "The raiders knew what they wanted, they only set fire to some of the caravans, starting with the beasts and then capturing those who came running. They never intended to fight, they came for easy pickings."

"Jona, they killed Dee! They set her on fire with a lighting strike... She just ran around and around... Screaming... It was horrible... She just kept running until she fell and—" Vesp started sobbing half way through, her words coming out like a thin whisper, the high pitch not like her voice at all. So that had been the sound that woke him, the screams of their alpaca as she was burned alive? 

Sick rose at the back of his throat, but he swallowed it, forced it down somehow. An intense feeling of restlessness gripped him. He knew there was nothing he could do, but he couldn't just do _nothing_. He untangled himself from his sisters and started sprinting in a direction leading away from the camp, towards the dunes. They called after him but he ignored the words, he knew what they were saying, and he didn't care. It wasn't anything he didn't already know. 

The ground around the camp was a trampled myriad of footprints and kicked up sand but just past it he could see a clear track leading deeper into the desert. There were obvious krolusk tracks among them, more than one, and his gut clenched painfully as the reality of it became harder to deny. He knew what he was doing was foolish, stupid. There was no way he could catch up to them on foot, and even if he did there was nothing he could do to help. He'd probably just get captured himself, only...

"Don't stay up all night, alright? You'll only regret it tomorrow," he'd teased, humor in his voice; the last words Kirin had spoken to him the night before, before he left to sleep in the other caravan with the rest of the family because Jona's reading kept him awake. He'd just looked up briefly, made a non-committal sound in his throat. They both knew he would, anyway. Too absorbed by the book to even register what his brother had looked like then, just enough to catch a shadow of a smile at the corner of his mouth. The way he couldn't keep the amused look from his eyes, even when he tried to sound serious, was so typically Kirin. 

_Why him?_

The sun had climbed past the horizon enough to bathe the landscape fully in light, making tracking the raiders both easier and more difficult as the temperature quickly rose. He'd run out of breath long ago, his sprint turning into a desperate trudge across the dunes. He knew it was pointless, yet...

_Why not me instead?_

It wasn't long until he heard the sound of shifting sand and whoops behind him as the search party caught up to him. He didn't even look back or pause until two heavy hands landed on his shoulders, forcing him to halt and feel the reassuring pressure as they squeezed gently; _sympathetically._ "Jona, what are you doing here? You should return to your family, we got this."

With a hazy numbness he looked into the face of the man speaking, then around. They had one hyena leading the group, but most were on foot. Even so they were keeping a much better pace than he ever could, all of them well trained and strong. The best they had. He nodded, defeated.

_Useless, useless, **useless!**_

The walk back felt infinitely longer even if he was following in his own footsteps, his eyes on the ground to spare himself the blinding and merciless sun. Maybe that's why he caught the glint of something shiny in the sand, half buried in a footprint. He fell to his knees and brushed some of the sand away before scooping the object up into his hand, afraid to open his fist. Afraid of what he might see. Somehow he knew what he had found, recognized the shape even half buried, felt it in his palm, but he didn't want to believe it. He wanted so badly to be wrong. Maybe there was still time to wake up.

The tube shaped silver ear cuff caught the light and turned into a pale yellow as the sand reflected back from the polished surface. Kirin's silver cuff, the one he always wore since the day he'd managed to barter it free from a dismayed tortollan for a package of home-made wax candles. The shape of the jewelry turned blurry as his eyes filled with tears, no longer able to deny what he didn't want to believe. Dee was dead and half their home was burned to the ground.

_Kirin was gone._

All he could do now was hope that the search party found something, that they could free him before anything happened. That they could fulfill that dream, that fantasy shared by some many vulpera but that never really came true. Too see their loved ones again after they had been taken by the sethrak.

_It's all my fault..._


End file.
